View on the Arno, Italy (A Summer Evening; On the Arno - I)
Richard Wilson (Penegoes 1714 - Mold 1782)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1760 - 1763
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
902 x 1251 mm (35 1/2 x 49 1/4 in)
Place of origin
Great Britain
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486176
Caption
Wilson had a good classical education, and the Italian countryside, together with the work of Poussin and Claude inspired him to create idyllic landscapes. He was in Rome 1752-57, but also visited Naples where he studied the classical sites. Whilst there, he made numerous drawings which he was to use on his return to England. A bill made out by ‘Wm.Dormer’ to George O’Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) for five paintings (£260), dated 15 November 1802, included a ‘Landscape by Wilson’ which may be one of the three pictures by Wilson at Petworth today. It was once thought that this picture was that in the Tabley House sale, but it is, in fact, a variant of the same composition.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, View on the Arno, Italy (A Summer Evening; On the Arno - I) by Richard Wilson, RA (Penegoes 1714 – Mold 1782), signed on the rock in the right foreground, but difficult to discern: R W (monogram), 1760/63. A landscape with men fishing in the foreground with a girl and a baby by them; on the left-hand side are two oaks and a stump; on the right, a castle on a cliff with two small figures on the slope below, against the sky; a lake can be seen below centre with a square tower in trees on the far bank, beyond a river in a plain and distant hills. A variant of the same composition was at Tabley House, Cheshire in 1821 and a similar view is now at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (NT 515725). However, it is almost identical to another version, without a mother and child, at Tyntesfield (NT 20943) which had been called: A Summer Evening, Dolbadarn Castle. Other close versions are in the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
Provenance
In the collection of the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) by 1835 and may have been at Petworth by 1814, when exhibited at British Institution (104) and possibly one of three Wilsons bought from William Dormer in 1802 as a bill made out by 'Wm Dormer' to the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) for five paintings in the sum of £2609 and dated 15 November 1802 included a 'Landscape by Wilson', which may be this work; thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
Credit line
Petworth House, The Egremont Collection (acquired in lieu of tax by HM Treasury in 1956 and subsequently transferred to the National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
R W (monogram; signed on the rock in the right foreground but difficult to discern)
Makers and roles
Richard Wilson (Penegoes 1714 - Mold 1782), artist
References
Constable 1953 W. G. Constable, Richard Wilson, London, 1953, pp.89, 213